June Gloom in the Job Picture

Posted on Jul 2, 2010

June’s private-sector employment growth was less than stellar, with a “dishearteningly low number” of jobs being added to domestic payrolls in a signal that the economic recovery is encountering some serious headwinds. —JCL.

The New York Times:

The United States added just 83,000 private-sector jobs in June, a dishearteningly low number that could add to the growing number of economists who warn that the economic recovery has slowed to the point that it cannot generate enough job growth.

Over all, the nation lost 125,000 jobs, according to the monthly snapshot of the job market released by the Labor Department on Friday. Most of the lost jobs came as temporary workers hired by the federal government for the 2010 Census exited their jobs. The unemployment rate, based on a different survey, declined to 9.5 percent in June from the previous 9.7 percent. This decline came only because the nation’s labor force shrank by 652,000 jobs.

Just as last month’s government job report appeared deceptively robust, swollen by 411,000 workers hired by the federal government to help with the Census, so the June report appears deceptively anemic, as the government shed many of those same temporary Census workers.